


oh, there's just an empty space

by hellynz



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: ?? kind of, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Post-Episode: s11e05 The Tsuranga Conundrum, Thirteen Fanzine, dark doctor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-15 09:53:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18496519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellynz/pseuds/hellynz
Summary: Ryan looks for the Doctor in the middle of the night, wanting reassurance. He doesn't quite get it.--Written for the @thirteenfanzine weekly prompt!





	oh, there's just an empty space

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt "I have a duty of care".
> 
> If you love the 13th Doctor, you have to start following @thirteenfanzine on Tumblr. It is a fan-organized fanzine coming out in the next couple of months that I'm lucky enough to be a part of! You can also check out the following stories by people involved:
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/17407931/chapters/43815541
> 
> https://archiveofourown.org/works/18491446

The door to the TARDIS was open to a fantastic nebula, stars swirling past the doorway. The Doctor sat in the doorway, leaned against one wall, her shoulders rising and falling rhythmically in sleep.

Feeling a bit silly, Ryan stepped from the hallway into the console room and glanced around. The lights were low and the room was quieter than usual, the beeps and chimes of the ancient machine subdued. He took the stairs two at a time, almost tripping over them and catching himself against the console with a bang. Wincing, he glanced up.

There was a gentle inhale, and the Doctor turned, blinking over her shoulder at him.

“Hiya Ryan, you okay over there?”

“Yeah, yeah I’m fine, sorry. Tripped a little,” he said, ignoring the warmth going to his face.. 

“Listen, I’m sorry to wake you. I just...” he said, trailing off, his gaze drifting from his seated friend to the blaze of stars outside. After a beat, he shrugged and looked at the floor. “I couldn’t sleep. Dreams. Was looking to find something to do.”

The Doctor nodded knowingly and patted the floor next to her. “Don’t be sorry, I was just dozing off. Still getting over that mine if I’m honest.” He noted the arm curled protectively around her abdomen as he lowered himself to the floor, back against the wall of the entrance section and legs sprawled out in front of him.

“Yeah, Graham is gonna get you for that, just so you know. Yaz too, probably,” he said, snorting. “They’re both pissed you didn’t let Mabli check you over again. They only haven’t said anything cuz they’re hoping you’ll grow a brain and make a med bay appear on the ship or something.”

She gave him a soft smile and turned back out to the stars. “I don’t control what rooms the TARDIS makes. Anyways, Mabli wouldn’t have known what to do for me. There’s a reason they weren’t able to help me more over four days of being unconscious. My kind, there’s not much information about us out there, and I don’t really want to add to it if I don’t have to. Plus, I can sort myself out. Might just hurt a bit. But I’m used to that too.”

He grunted in return, kicking his feet across each other to get more comfortable. “I think that’s what’s really got them going. Why be in pain if you don’t have to?”

Humming softly, she raised her unoccupied hand and gestured out at space.

“You lot know this as Messier 20, or the Trifid Nebula,” the Doctor murmured. “It’s one of my favorites. Sometimes I do like to just watch the stars for a bit. Not for long, usually, at least not in this body, but I guess today is different.”

“You alright then?” Ryan asked, his brow furrowing.

“Yeah, I'm fine. Feeling a little less energetic than usual, is all.”

He clicked his tongue. “Don’t really believe you, to be honest.”

She turned and wrinkled her nose at him, reaching to give his shoulder a playful shove. “Okay, fine. I’ll tell you what’s up if you tell me about your dreams first.”

Opening his mouth to protest, she cut him off with a quick wave of her hand. “Save it. I take care of you first, it’s my ship, I have a duty of care.”

The wince that hit her immediately after saying that was subtle, and he decided to ignore it for now. But he definitely made a note.

“Alright, fine. I go first. I just had nightmares about today.”

He watched her shoulders slump. “Makes sense. It was a lot. Your first sonic mine, your first hospital ship, your first live birth. Plus me running around like a maniac, didn’t exactly put on a show of confidence.”

“Nah, it wasn’t even that,” he said, turning to face directly forward. “I had faith in you, I knew you’d save the day. But I had dreams where… where I was floating. Through space, after dying on the Tsuranga and the Pting had eaten the entire ship around us. Dead, and I knew it was just my body, but it was so scary to just see it floating there, alone, forever. It freaked me out,” he said, slowing his speech towards the end and still refusing to look towards the Doctor.

She sighed, long and slow. “That… makes sense too.”

“What would you do with our bodies if we died?”

The Doctor stopped breathing momentarily, and then shuffled her hips forward, discreetly (but not so much that he didn’t notice) pulling their bodies about as far apart as she could. “Thanks for bringing that up, it definitely doesn’t haunt me constantly.” She muttered, her voice bitter.

Ryan shifted again, leaning forward and scooting out to face the stars, jamming himself into the space beside her so their legs were forced to rest against each other. She lifted her head from the door frame to look at him, eyes dark and veiled. If he looked closely enough, he thought he might have noticed a film of tears starting to build in them. But, for her sake, he didn’t look that close.

“What would you want me to do with your body?” she asked finally, not breaking away from his gaze.

He considered for a moment. “Think I’d want to be buried back on Earth next to my nan and my mum. That’s one good thing my dad did for me, is let them be buried next to each other. My mum didn’t have any family of her own. Graham probably wants the same, but you’d have to ask him.”

There was a pause so long that Ryan became convinced he wasn’t going to get an answer.

“Alright,” she whispered finally, turning back out to the stars. “If it comes to it, I can make that happen.”

“Thank you,” he said, and she snorted, nodding, lifting one knee to her chest and resting her chin upon it. “It’s weird that even after seeing all the rest of the universe I would want to end up back there. Betcha Yaz wants her body thrown into a black hole or something.”

Her shoulders next to his were shaking. He let his mouth curl into a smirk, hopeful, until he realized she wasn’t laughing.

“Don’t know why you would thank me for that,” she said. “’Thank you’ for letting me get killed just because you’re willing to bring my body back to Earth?”

He realized, with a dull ache in his chest, that her optimism was the thing missing that really made this so strange. Even when calm or serious, the Doctor’s attitude never failed to convey her absolute certainty that everything was going to end up okay. He began to wonder how much of that optimism was her actual believes, and how much was an act.

“I’m not sure what to say to that,” he said, shrugging, and she shook her head.

“Stars, I’m acting stupid today. I’m sorry, Ryan, you came around looking for a distraction didn’t you, we should-”

“Shouldn’t do nothing,” he said, interrupting. “This is a distraction. Look at where we are. It’s mental.”

Another long pause stretched out into the night, and he pretended not to notice as her breathing shifted to muffled sniffs and hiccups.

“So, was your plan to sit here and blame yourself for the potential of us getting hurt even though we didn’t?”

She shot a glare his way, but he could tell there was no real annoyance behind it.

“I have duty of care. For every single creature that steps onto my ship, I am responsible for their lives,” she said, wiping tears angrily from her face. “I almost didn’t save you this time. Twice.”

“But you did, in the end.”

“But what if I hadn’t.”

It was terrifying, he thought, to see her without her hope. As she’d said many times, it was what she believed in most of all. And usually it gathered itself in the air around her like a cape, radiating off of her and into the people she was with, so that even if the situation seemed impossible he never really thought she had given up. That wasn’t happening, right now.

“Do most of the people you travel with die?” he asked, voice soft, hoping she’d say no even as he anticipated the opposite.

Before, even with her hard eyes and her lack of hope, she’d been fidgeting like she always did, kicking her feet or twiddling with her hair or readjusting her position. Now, she went completely still.

“Well, everyone dies eventually,” she said, her voice low.

“You know what I mean.”

She took a deep, shuddering breath. 

“Not most, necessarily. Guess it depends on what you mean by die.”

He chuckled once, then saw her face again. She was staring at him, her eyes still steely. A nervous lump developed in his throat. “Well, I mean die. As in, they died. Like, experienced death.”

It was her turn to laugh. Tossing her head back, she let out a few loud peals of laughter, and they echoed behind them while dying in space in front of them. “That, unfortunately, is not specific enough,” she finally answered, pressing her hand to her side with a wince.

“Gotta be honest, Doctor, you’re scaring me a little,” he said, and it was true. Goosebumps fading from his skin prickled back to life as her gaze once more fell on him. “Although, I guess you’re allowed to for all the reassuring you usually do.”

She contemplated him for awhile, and he let her. He recognized, again, how strange it was to feel the moving air of the TARDIS on his back and the still of the void outside. The Doctor sat to his left, stuck between movement and stillness herself, timeless but ancient. 

“I’ve had friends thrown back in time so that at the moment that I existed in, they had already died, even after living happy lives together” she began. “I had a partner forced to live in an alternate universe, so she’s technically dead but she also got the chance to live her life. Another friend was sentenced to death during our travels, and I stole her away in the moment before her death so that she can keep existing until she’s ready to die and she returns. But Martha left of her own accord, and so did Mickey, I guess. Sarah Jane got to live her life doing what I do but with her friends and family on Earth. Jack can never really die, technically. Donna doesn’t remember me, and would be devastated not to be here if she did, but she doesn’t and she’s married and happy now.” She sighed and leaned forward, hunching over and folding her hands together, resting her forearms on her thighs. “Some died in worse ways that I still don’t want to talk about.”

“That’s okay, you don’t have to,” he said, a little too quickly, and he knew she noticed.

“Sorry, Ryan,” she said again, voice soft. “I hope you know that I will do literally anything to keep you safe.”

“I know you will,” he said. What he didn’t say was the uncertainty that had fallen over him that “literally anything” will be enough. He didn’t want to put that on her right now; he had a hunch she knew what he was thinking anyway.

When he glanced over a few minutes later and saw her once again slumped against the door frame, he scoffed and reached over, pulling her coat gently until she had turned and flopped her head onto his shoulder instead. She muttered a protest against him and didn’t quite snuggle in, but accepted the contact and drifted off.

He stayed, staring into space, until the TARDIS awakening with the movements of the two other humans aboard took him from his thoughts. Gently shaking the arm the Doctor was resting against, he smirked down at her when she started and sat up, rubbing at her eyes.

“Did I sleep that long?” she asked, incredulous, and he laughed.

“Yeah, guess so.”

Mumbling about falling behind on her to-do list, she made to stand, but he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back forward.

“I think that’s what really matters, in the end. In my opinion,” he said, searching her eyes. The frigid hardness from before had faded back to a thin guard, and he thought he could feel some of her hope starting to reappear around her.

She tilted her head. “What really matters?”

“That you try,” he said, sliding his hand down to squeeze hers. “You try with everything you have to protect us. Beyond that, there’s nothing else you could do. All anyone can do is their best, right? Corny, but it’s true. My nan used to say that.”

The last of the wall behind her eyes dropped completely, and he was struck once again with just how old and intelligent the being he was talking to really was.

“Yeah. Guess you’re right,” she said, and even though he knew she didn’t really believe it, could see it in those old dark eyes, he let the words hang in the air unrebuked. It was better for both of them.

**Author's Note:**

> Me: this is just a prompt for fun, it doesn't have to be perfect, just pOST IT  
> Me, sweating: _did i say Ryan too many times_
> 
> Join in on the weekly prompts, through whatever medium you create in! Follow us on Tumblr:  
> @thirteenfanzine  
> @hellynz


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